


Yield

by aegistheia



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Demisexual Character, M/M, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:09:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegistheia/pseuds/aegistheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Submission is a choice, and in it, power.  Damen is frankly surprised that he’d have to have this conversation with Laurent.</p><blockquote>
  <p>“Would that disputes over treaties could be resolved by lighting things on fire,” Damen says, teasing.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Yield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jediseagull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jediseagull/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy it!

“A success?” Damen says as Laurent shuts the door.

“In a manner of speaking.”  Laurent frowns at the table, then seems to finally register the fact that the table came with chairs.  He pulls one out and sits.  “If their representatives are worth half their weight in diplomacy, they’ll be discussing this through the night.”

Damen feels one of his eyebrows hitch. “Were the treaty negotiations that difficult?” It’s not often Laurent would reveal any state of discomposure, especially after a bath to unwind.

“If you consider their exasperating idiocy trying, then yes.  I have spent a lifetime yielding to move forward.  You would think they’d learn pattern recognition after a while.”

“They have only hearsay of your prowess in court to guide them.”

“Whereas you had the best seats of my performances at every hour of the day?  Please.  They are blind.  To my benefit, to be sure, but honestly.”

“It seems to be the unique way of Vere,” Damen points out, “to mean a multitude more of things than what you say.  Sometimes many things _but_ what you say.  It’s inevitable that you yield.”

“And the bow-and-arrow trajectory that is Akielon politics blinkers you to treachery.”  But Laurent frowns as he says it, and shakes his head.  Damen catches himself before he is more distracted by the shimmer of his golden hair; conversation with Laurent requires a man’s full wits.  “It doesn’t matter.  I’ve finished my part.  Your own negotiations went well, I assume.”

“Yes.  I’d wager they went better than yours, because I’m free until tomorrow afternoon.”

Laurent levels him a steady gaze.  “So Nikandros has agreed to run interference tonight.”

“The two of you get along too well,” Damen says wryly.

“Well, after the spectacular fight we had over the state of your back, we were going to resolve our issues either by setting each other on fire or getting along like barns set on fire.”

“You did try to set each other on fire.”

“He does have very good reflexes,” Laurent acknowledges, reminiscent.

“Would that disputes over treaties could be resolved by lighting things on fire,” Damen says, teasing.

“A remarkably inspiring suggestion.  Alas, your own Kyros could tell you from personal experience that people do not make for good kindling.”

“They do dodge from the fire so,” Damen says.  Laurent huffs, but offers no further reply.  Well, then.

Quiet, contemplative Laurent lingering in a silence like a knife edge is usually a sign that Damen should brace himself.

Damen does not brace himself.  “Does it bother you that you default to giving way?”

“No.”

“Giving way is a tactically sound strategy, and you are an eminently proficient reader of situations.  There is no shame in this.”

“I’m not ashamed.”

“Then why do you look so troubled by the fact that you do not favour confronting a conflict head on?”

Laurent spears him with an icy glare.  “Aren’t Akielons supposed to only move forward and never fall back?”

“Not if it will lose us the war.  I know,” Damen adds, “that Akielos politics does not easily lend this impression.  But the wiser leader knows that different circumstances call for different approaches, and this is no different.  It just so happens that certain approaches may take longer than others.  Which,“ he says as he watches the minute shift in Laurent’s expression, “is what is irritating you this time?  That you did not choose the most economical route?”

“How I tolerate your impudence so,” Laurent murmurs.

Damen snorts eloquently.  That has been blatantly false for so many months that even the blindest of courtiers would have seen through it.  Laurent’s eyes narrow.

“Damianos of Akielos,” he muses, savouring each word with exquisite enunciation, “have you never wondered why you are still here?  And why I am still here?”

“No.”

“No?”

“You and I are both here because of the same reason we had always been here,” says Damen.  “By choice.”

“That,” says Laurent scornfully, “is patently untrue.”

“What, did you want me to say circumstance?  That’s out of our control.  Our choices in the face of circumstance, now, it’s the only reason that matters.  And that’s why we are both here.  Because we chose to be.  And,” Damen interrupts as Laurent opens his mouth, “you’re so capable I doubt a few lost hours will impact your rule.”

“I’d lose more time by setting people on fire, I suppose,” Laurent says, but it is merely a token protest, given the way he is finally relaxing.

“There is no shame in liking it, either,” Damen says.

Thoughtful eyes pin him with piercing regard before the complex shadows shift into a much gentler curiosity.  “You enjoy it, don’t you.”

“What?”

“Being taken.  You’ve had it before, hadn’t you?”

Damen sits back and considers him.  Laurent is relaxed, eternally sunstruck hair curling from dampness, limbs arranged in graceful lines on the chair, tension bled out of him as if he had left it in the bathwater.  His expression is as open as it had ever been, unfurled, vulnerable.

Damen had, in his younger days, tried it once or twice out of sheer curiosity, and found the experience pleasing enough.  ‘Pleasing’ might be too weak a description for this kind of bed play with Laurent, though.  He can imagine it: Laurent, adamantine eyes bright with focus, slim fingers deft and thorough as they explore him and slick him open.  The want rises through him, sudden and unapologetic, the desire of feeling Laurent’s cock stretch him open.  “Yes.  I have.  And I do enjoy it.  As, I would hope, you also do.”

The corner of Laurent’s mouth curls.  “This is not your most elegant attempt at fishing for compliments.”

Damen leans forward, striking an exaggerated pose of solicitous attention.  “What do you like about it?”

Laurent places both elbows on the table and leans his chin on interlocking fingers.  “I enjoy you.”

Despite himself, Damen flushes.

Laurent lets his smile bloom in full.  “You did tell me that it was simple, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Damen says, “so why did you ask if I enjoyed it?”

The exquisite language of Laurent’s body shifts as those impossible blue eyes lid to half mast.  Damen reaches out, cups the back of Laurent’s neck and draws him close.  He tips his forehead against Laurent’s.  “I will allow that you are getting better at asking for what you want in bed play in simple language.”

“Experience has taught me that Akielons like to avoid complicated words.  Even your cursing is unimaginative.”

“We can be good without words at all.”  This close, Damen can see every lash framing Laurent’s eyes.  Laurent allows him one lush, slow kiss, then pulls away towards the bed.

Despite that boast, complicated bed play had seemed inevitable the moment Laurent learned to keep his senses between the sheets.  Even Damen’s increasingly inventive accommodations hadn’t rendered him speechless for longer than a few repetitions; in turn, Damen had to learn to keep his own head for conversation.  Damen has never had such an exasperating bedmate.

He’s not sure if he can have any other bedmate, now.

This time, though, Laurent is uncommonly quiet as he alternately demands for attention and lavishes it.  It isn’t until Damen has them both undressed and flushed with arousal that Laurent presses the phial into his hands and says, “I would have you tonight.”

“I would have you any night,” Damen says, suppresses his rising excitement by a supreme act of will.  It would not do to be overeager this time; Laurent’s fingers are jittery, and his mouth firmed into a strange line.  They will have more nights together, and Damen will be able to coax Laurent into wilder abandonment then.  Tonight, he straddles Laurent’s hips, oils himself and lets Laurent watch him ride the sensation.  The moon is bright tonight; it reflects the intent ice of Laurent’s steady gaze and washes out Laurent’s gorgeous flush, until Damen could also believe that Laurent is unaffected by his arousal, cold and untouchable and absent from the physicality of their imminent coupling.

This, more than anything, is what prompts Damen to say, “It’s no different in how you fight.”  Laurent, improbably, stills.  “The way you would yield, and as they move, you take control.  This is the same.”

“Control?”  Laurent grinds his hips up, abruptly.  Damen loses his breath on the shock of pleasure that sings up his spine, and lets Laurent roll them so that he is hovering over him, gold hair streaming down to curtain them both.  His eyes are nearly black, so blown are his pupils.  “You believe I have control when I am flat on my back and you are dictating the pace with your weight and leverage?”  He presses them together again with vicious force and Damen cries out, shuddering.  He can’t _think_ , how on earth had Laurent managed to hold onto his sanity—

“You— absorb and reflect and subvert.  On the battlefield, in court, in relationships—”

Laurent growls, violence in his voice.  Damen doesn’t care.  He is past being capable of fear.  “You match pace with them, you dance with them, and you turn the dance against them.”

Laurent’s hands tighten against his arms.  “I,” he says, eyelids fluttering as Damen rolls his hips up, “I do not dance.  Like— like that.”

“Yes, you do.”  Damen draws him down, and opens his mouth for Laurent to explore at will.  “You spar with them, and you win.”

Laurent moans into the kiss.  Damen feels it in his bones.  He doesn’t know how he is still talking; he is barely registering his own words.  Their hips are moving entirely on a rhythm of their own accord, and he’s about to bet his favourite horse that Laurent had lied to him and actually had done this before.  Perhaps it is because of this that he says:

“But you don’t win like that with everyone.  You give in to me, just me, without rule or hesitation.”

Laurent opens his eyes as he draws away from the kiss.  The confession, when it comes, is silent, given through the subtle shifts of his hands and his hips and his legs and his mouth.  Damen wants to kiss him so badly it is all he can do to stop himself from burying his hands into that fine gold hair and dragging him down, but.  But it’s— it’s Laurent’s choice—

Laurent falls to his side and Damen goes with him, rising upright to sit once more upon Laurent.  He swallows a groan when Laurent’s cock nudges up against him, and says, “Only me.”

“I want just you,” Laurent says, softly, “no other.”

He touches Damen’s cheek. Damen catches him about his wrist and presses a kiss to his palm, aching with tenderness.  “I would not fail you.”

“Nor I, you.”  Laurent brushes a callused thumb over his cheekbone, his jaw, his lips.  Damen bites gently at the pad as it slips into his mouth.  Laurent's other hand falls away to hold onto Damen with no attempt to reach for anything else. “You should not be surprising me still with how clear-eyed you are.  I didn’t expect— you to point out the subtleties.”

“Frankly I’m surprising myself, too,” Damen admits as he makes a mess of the sheets oiling his palms, and takes the beautiful line of Laurent’s arousal in hand.  Laurent’s sharp inhale is a revelation.  “Ready?”

“I should be asking you,” Laurent retorts with some asperity, but Damen hears more clearly the eager bite of his fingers, the tremble of his words.  The buried tension, newly awakened, settling into the lines of his shoulders.  The intensity of his mental readjustment, as he edges on the periphery of his surrender.

“I’m ready,” he says, fingers stroking down once, hard just to hear Laurent gasp, and sinks down to follow.  The hard glow of the stretch burns up his spine, and he almost closes his eyes to savour it.  Too long, it has been too long: it is so foreign his mind is numbed with indecision between pain and pleasure.  But he is not here for just this edge.

Laurent’s mouth had fallen open as Damen started to take him in.  He is shuddering now, vibrating to the moan caught in his throat.  Damen barely has the mind to stroke a comforting thumb over the crest of Laurent’s hipbone, so distracted is he by the sheer beauty of the man beneath him, giving in, giving up to him.

“Thank you for trusting me,” he says, helplessly, and is rewarded with a full body shiver of admission.  Laurent has not lost the sweetness of his voice as he breaks open, and Damen can’t last like this, not when Laurent lets go and lets him watch, not when he meets Damen’s hard ride thrust for impossible thrust.  The magnitude of Laurent’s regard is a painful weight in his chest, something wholly undeserved and humbling, and he cannot help but respond in kind.

“Come in me,” he whispers, and gloriously, incredibly, Laurent chooses to obey.  The heat of it sings through him, as Laurent’s expression twists, and he is lost, he is lost.

 

 

\-----

 

Laurent has also not lost the proclivity to take care of him soon after he recovers.  Damen lets him have his space and his control, and drinks his fill of a tousled Laurent, flushed with orgasm and more beautiful than ever.  “Come back to bed,” he says eventually, as Laurent fusses over the towels.

“This will only take a minute,” Laurent says, but lets Damen clasp a hand around his wrist and draw him back into their rumpled cocoon of sheets.

“Let the servants take care of that.  In bed, we are man to man.”

“Equals?” says Laurent, “sovereigns have no equal.  Only peers, and rivals.”

“And allies.  By circumstance, yes, but also by choice.”

Laurent regards him for a long, cool moment.  At length, he says, “by choice.”

Damen strokes a possessive hand down Laurent’s side.  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

The air around Laurent hardens.  Surprised, Damen looks down in time to catch the slow sweep of Laurent’s consideration, powerful as the tide.  “That if I would yield, then you would hold me as I fell?”  He stretches beside him, a vision lined in silver and marble, and Damen very possibly might not be able to speak for the rest of the night.  “As you would yield to me and heed my desires?  My dear barbarian king.  I have seen you bow to me more than I have ever to you.”

Complicated bed play, indeed.  “You’re welcome, then.”

“What do you think of fire as an incentive for quick problem solving, though.”

“Banned from bed,” Damen says very firmly, “silks are flammable, and conflagrations are not my favoured methods of inflammation. So to speak.”

“Is that your secret to negotiations,” Laurent says interestedly, and Damen is obligated by honour to shut him up. 

 

 

 

_-fin-_


End file.
